Ragnarock
by metroanime
Summary: what if aliens attacked Earth, and they weren't idiots?
1. Nabiki's Notes

Ranma 1/2: Ragnarock   
  
submitted for your amusement. i got this idea partly from ID4 (which i didn't like) and "Lucifer's Hammer" (which i DID like.) i had not seen "Deep Impact" or"Armaggedon" at the time of the original story.  
  
Metroanime@mindspring.com   
http://metroanime.home.mindspring.com/  
  
Someone was going to take this one on, but i haven't seen an update in awhile. So here's what i've got. Who was gonna do it, when, etc, were prob lost during one of my hard drive crashes.  
  
Chapter 1: Here's Ragnarock... Nabiki's Tale version 2.0  
  
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Ares looked up, catching the eye of Hel.  
  
"This...sucks."  
  
Hel nodded. She chose to remain silent.  
  
"These are aliens centuries in advance of the humans in terms of technology, capable of psionic combat. They have forceshields and powerbeams, antigravity, and mile long spaceships. Their mothership is damn near the size of Earth's moon. And they're just completely and totally lame..."  
  
Hel nodded again.  
  
Ares grinned. Nobody was watching. Well, just himself, Hel, Tiamat, and Ahriman. "Let's see if I get a less advanced but smarter group of nasties to poke their heads in. This Ranma guy is supposed to have a Destiny, right? Let's give him one."  
  
------------------------------------------  
  
excerpts from the Journal of Nabiki Tendo:  
  
January 12, 1991:  
  
It's all over the news. Confirmation of the formerly hypothetical Oort cloud.  
  
Chunks of ice and rock are inward bound, detected by any number of telescopes. The theory is that something Big disturbed one of the clumps of meteors and comets out there beyond Pluto's orbit.  
  
Should make for some interesting meteor showers early next year according to the newscasters.  
  
I shook up Daisuke and Hiroshi for extra money today. Looks like Kuno isn't the only one interested in Akane photos. Little sister is beginning to bloom and the sweet smell on the air is the aroma of profit. I am SO glad I took that photography course.  
  
------------------  
  
June 12, 1991:  
  
Made some excellent profit on the Gateway-Furinkan baseball match. A real grudge match. As usual, a brawl occurred. I had set the odds just right, the brawl took place in the third inning, and I cleaned up.   
  
Kuno-baby is showing definite signs of obsession as regards little sister. Doesn't notice me, which is too bad as he's tall and rich, two of my fav things. Even if he's a moron. Long as I can profit off of him, I'll keep it friendly.  
  
What is it about Akane, anyway? Is it the forbidden fruit aspect, that she'll hurt them severely for even attempting to ask her out? All through school up until this year she was more likely to play Romeo than Juliet. She was ignored for the most part, except for her friends Yuka and Sayuri among a few others. The boys, as far as I knew, never noticed her existence. Hmmm. That gives me an idea, and since Kuno's so easy to manipulate...  
  
Oh yeah. Something wild on the news today. Freak astronomical accident. Mars got hit by a comet. If there was life on Mars before, there ain't now. Six mile diameter chunk of ice and rock at 22,000 mph equals BIG crater. Volcanoes going off, etcetera. Computer animation of the whole thing and talk about it being exactly the sort of thing that toasted the dinosaurs.  
  
Gotta remember that. I'm sure it'll end up on a test sometime.  
  
-------------------------  
  
December 24, 1991:  
  
They lied.  
  
When they told us there was no danger last year, they lied to us. When Mars was hit by that comet in June, they told us it was a freak accident and that it couldn't happen to us. When the amateur astronomers and some of the other countries started saying alarming things, our goverment and the news agencies were going on about alarmists and terrorists and misleading data.   
  
All lies.  
  
It's coming. It finally got to the point where so many people were able to find it, that the powers that be couldn't put a lid on it anymore.  
  
They call it the Ragnarock. It's a chunk of rock and ice and some "exotic materials" about the size of Tokyo. When it hits, well, whatever it hits isn't going to be there. The scientists are still screaming at each other over the exact details.  
  
It's the "big mother" of a whole bunch of other bits and pieces. Some of the rocks or ice chunks are small enough that I could lift them myself. The really big nasty one is a chunk of ice that is moving very slow and will probably miss everything. THAT sucker is called "Aquarius" and it masses more than three times what the moon does. It isn't coming anywhere near us, thank goodness.  
  
The lab types are also still screaming at each other over some things they find odd about the whole thing. Each planet is getting hit with a set of small rocks and a single big rock. Almost as if they were aimed. There's other details that seem to be stirring the "alien invasion" crowd but no one has seen spaceships.  
  
The science types seem to feel that a couple of centuries ago, something BIG passed through the Oort Cloud. Orbits were altered just enough that now, like a snowball rolling down hill, the changes are obvious and catastrophic to anything in its path.  
  
I'm used to keeping track of my business here, how much money I've gotten off of what. It just somehow doesn't seem as important anymore. Having the very real possibility of becoming personally extinct, I suppose.  
  
Kasumi's going on as if nothing happened. Akane heard about the Rock and has been going not so quietly nuts trying to deny all the facts and figures. She still hasn't come up with a convincing reason for the release of the information slowly through private channels. Considering the panic and rioting, the reason that our fearless leaders kept the secret as long as they did is pretty obvious.  
  
Idiots. Rioting and panicking aren't going to do anyone any good. And I can't figure out the ones who are choosing suicide rather than wait for this to hit. I'm considering taking up religion myself, hobbies are good.  
  
We'll see if the American plan to use nuclears on the Ragnarock gets any support. Greenpeace, among other groups, are making waves against the entire idea of using nuclear weapons. There's also groups that, like Akane, are stating the whole thing is some worldwide conspiracy and there are no asteroids. We'll see.   
  
--------------------------  
  
December 26, 1991:  
  
Asteroid:1, Us:0.  
  
The nukes went bust, or close enough. There's a good chance the Ragnarock will be deflected just enough. Some of the other rocks were vaporized or close enough. Some of the remaining are small enough that they won't be as much of a problem. One of the smaller rocks is due to hit early next month. Called Loki, it's more than twice the size and mass of the Tokyo Tower. There's a chance it too will miss.  
  
Despite all the criticisms from anti-nuclear groups, none of the missiles that were launched came back down with a trail of radioactive debris or anything similar. I don't understand why they're classifying the number of launches. It was nice to get the United States, China, and Russia cooperating on something. Even Israel threw a few out there, though I didn't know they *had* intercontinental nuclears.   
  
Daddy laid a little bombshell on us. If he doesn't survive and we do, he'd made a deal with one of his old friends. Unite the families with a marriage. Some guy named Ranma Saotome would marry one of the daughters Tendo. If anyone survives, I added.  
  
Akane vented a lot of tension and frustration. No way she was going to marry some boy. Of course, she was getting hit a lot at school with the "I don't think we're gonna survive this, and I don't want to die without having made love" line. Some guys have just *no* class. She stomped them, of course. But because there was this nagging feeling that some could have been sincere, you could see that Akane felt a touch of guilt for pounding them.   
  
Nobody tried the line on me. I feel insulted.  
  
The only one that didn't react to this Tendo-Saotome thing was Kasumi. Sometimes I wonder if anyone's home anymore. Funny thing, Doctor Tofu (local chiropractor and moxibuxtion expert) vanished after coming by to see Kasumi the other day. Note on his clinic states that he's gone up   
to his family's home in the mountains. Kasumi's so out of it, I don't know that she's noticed.  
  
Maybe she's better off that way.  
  
----------------------   
  
Jan. 11, 1992:  
  
"Loki" hit. I'm writing this from the raft we threw together. There's no sign of Akane, and with her swimming abilities she might not have made it out of the Furinkan Gym when the tsunami hit.  
  
The details I record for posterity. "Loki" proved the alien theory all right. It evaded missles. Astronomy was never my big field, but this much I DO know. Meteors do NOT do evasive patterns.  
  
When it hit, Loki slammed into the arctic at nearly Mach Ten. Millions of tons of ice vaporized. More melted. It didn't hit straight on, but almost tunnelled through the arctic ocean and then somehow triggered a massive set of volcanoes. There will be a new Arctic landmass before long.   
  
The roads were packed. The news agencies had been predicting a miss almost to the last moment. Still the traffic jams in every country as people scurried about were on all the news programs until the ionosphere went wacky.  
  
Then the roaring noise. Then the water. It seemed that when "Loki" approached, it separated. The one part slammed into the Arctic as described above. Another chunk managed to hit the water Southeast of Japan. On a major faultline. The earthquake flattened our house and most of the local buildings despite the distance from the epicenter. I'd stayed home from school that day, a lot of us did, and was standing in the street listening to my radio when the earth started moving.  
  
Tremors in Tokyo are common enough. BIG ones are not. I saw buildings going down like dominos, some people hadn't shut off their gas - so explosions and fires immediately going off all around. Then I was trying to get Kasumi out of the house, she'd just gone in "for a minute" when the quake had hit. I found my suitcase, I found Kasumi, then came this odd silence.  
  
It was weird, there was still the alarms in the distance, and there were still items being smashed, and still a few screams and cries off, but it was like there was this "stillness" looming up around us. Then the radio that I'd left on and over by the wall when I'd tried to   
unbury Kasumi, the announcer started screaming one of those words which no Japanese really wants to hear. On a news report at least. Tsunami.  
  
It was weird, I'd just gotten Kasumi out. And I turned. That looming silence seemed to get bigger. And I saw it. It was just something weird about the horizon beyond the usual rows of buildings (those that were still standing), but the warning was enough that we knew what it was. We dragged each other to the other side of the house, found a section that looked fairly sturdy,and prayed. I'm not sure what Kasumi did, but I curled up into a ball, hoping that it would help somehow.  
  
The wave hit and I was bounced around like a pachinko ball. I eventually came to the surface, bruised but alive. I found Kasumi and a section of the old Tendo dojo roof (sans tiles) floating not too far away. My radio, grabbed again just before the wave hit, somehow survived too. It has one of those wrist straps, which is how I kept ahold of it when the water hit. There's this big dent in it though, I'm not sure from what.  
  
Better it than me.  
  
We just rode it out, hearing nothing but the crackle of static from my little radio for hours. Finally we saw evidence of further *bad* things. The thick smoke trail visible and the occasional snippet through the static told of the volcano, a new one and a big one.  
  
Now, there's a lot of jutting buildings off in the distance, but Nerima was always pretty low lying. Heck, most of the buildings were just two stories and they're underneath this heavily polluted water somewhere. Well, that and almost everything had gotten kinda flattened before the wave had even hit.  
  
Akane was at Furinkan, but the wave or the quake might have collapsed the building. Neither of us see the place.  
  
I'm getting little bits and pieces of stations on my little portable radio now. How the towers survived, I have no idea. I can piece some of what's going on from these snippets. In the meantime Kasumi is asleep, her wet clothes stretched out to dry but they'll probably smell of that damn volcano.  
  
Getting tired. Noticed that I've been shaking for the past half-hour and getting quite twitchy. Hope we find land soon.  
  
--------------------  
  
January 15, 1992:  
  
Rescue. For the moment, at least. Kasumi and I are aboard a ship known as the Myou No Maru. The name is fairly descriptive. A truly odd looking crew and the ship...well, it survived the tsunami so it must be tougher than it looks.   
  
I'll introduce the crew in later chapters. Being able to have a hot bath, dry clothes, and both warm food and hot tea...  
  
I wouldn't sell my soul, but my gratitude is quite sincere. The rescue was yesterday evening so we really only spent three days on the raft, watching parts of it sink, with a layer of salt and ash on everything, and just being all sorts of miserable.  
  
Kasumi has some serious problems. She's sick and puking, but apparently the owner of the ship has had some medical training and says she'll be fine. Too much exposure, too much salt, and she swallowed too much water after the wave had hit. According to him, we're also still both suffering from exhaustion.  
  
I agree, but I have to know what's going on. Apparently this ship was a "jack-of-all-trades." A little smuggling, a little spywork if the surveillance equipment is any indication, and a cover story of being a fishing vessel. It's the surveillance and communication equipment that's got my immediate attention.  
  
Some of the stories here are really bizarre. While sitting with Kasumi, Lufa was telling me about the wonders of her homeland. Ancient amazon tribes locked in periodic battles with an ancient enemy, a race of ancient beings looking on dispassionately, and a set of cursed waterholes created by an ancient magical battle...  
  
If it weren't for Tolkein and that guy that turns into a cat, I'd have said she was full of it. More on the weirdness factor later.  
  
The water is still polluted badly. At least there aren't all those floating bodies anymore.  
  
Somewhere under that waterline is our ancestral home, our high school, and our past.  
  
Where our future is, I have no idea.  
  
----------  
  
January 16, 1992:  
  
I thought I was hallucinating. I wasn't. I thought that I knew how the world worked. It appears that I need to consider Shakespeare's old phrase: that there are far stranger things in the world than my former philosophies indicated.   
  
The Captain is an ex-superspy who reads cheap romance novels. The owner makes casual references to things that happened over a thousand years ago. The surly pilot apparently came from an amazon village in China years ago.   
  
And a short, stocky, British sounding seaman has been diving down to come back up with salvage. Heavy stuff too. No evidence of the bends, and when I take a look under the waves using a glass bowl, I can't see a thing. Part of that's due to the murkiness, I guess.   
  
Somehow this guy "Tolkein" is able to swim down there, then come up laden with loot that should have weighed him down.  
  
Some girl named Atsuko and a kid named Ryunnosuke were found during the night. As soon as we've got enough supplies, we're heading to a safe port. The Captain isn't sure the usual Chinese port is even going to be there, and the volcano is between here and Australia.  
  
None of the crew seems to particularly care what we figure out at this point. The owner smirks, and the short guy just mumbles something about how if I've got the time to play "junior detective" that I should be helping out instead.  
  
Point taken.  
  
-----------------  
  
January 17, 1992:  
  
The crew called everyone in to hear this.  
  
Turns out, lots of places like the American Midwest and Central Europe have pretty much survived unscathed. Island nations like Japan, well- the shoreline is at what used to be 525 feet above sea level before Loki.  
  
Not only have both poles been melted, but there are new landmasses forming. Water gets displaced there so there's more of it here. They expect the waters to recede some as the Arctic refreezes but it may take some time for sea levels to return to normal. If ever.  
  
Kasumi's looking a lot better. Having something to do, like help with the cooking, has improved her a lot faster than bed rest.  
  
Atsuko (weird girl), Ryunnosuke (elementary school kid), some JHS student named Nanami Rokugo, and three people from what used to be a mountain village were already there.  
  
Yeah, we've made contact with other Japanese. Forgot to mention that. Other than the first tsunami, the water levels were just slowly rising for the past several days. Not that one can notice away from land, but the landbound folks were continually scrambling to get away from the   
new shoreline.  
  
When it hit, "Loki" also ripped open a section of the planetary crust. I've never been that much up on geology or planetary sciences, but apparently Nathan and Kissu are both into this stuff a little more. What "Loki" did, according to the brain trust in Zurich, was to create  
very briefly a very intense gravitational field. Ice was crushed before it melted. Then the planet's crust buckled and fissured.   
  
So, worldwide flooding, earthquakes, fires. Not to mention cloud cover from all the volcanoes worldwide. And with particles from volcanoes and explosions, some water sources are getting polluted.  
  
On to the current problem. One of the really big chunks of rock is going to miss us. Yay for our side. The remains of Ragnarock is gonna miss us. Unfortunately, the computer models all indicate we're gonna be missing a moon real soon. They've renamed Ragnarock to "Fenris" now.  
  
A chunk of ice, rock, nickel-iron, and those aforementioned "exotic elements" roughly the size of Shinjuku (those nukes did some good after all) will impact the moon in eight days. With the velocity of Fenris at being 28,500kph, neither is expected to survive.  
  
This turns the "planet killer" cannonball into more of a shotgun effect. Pieces of moon and meteor will be drawn into the "gravity well" of Earth and are gonna continue to hit for some time.  
  
Another missle like "Loki" hit Germany.   
  
It's a mess.  
  
-------------  
  
January 19, 1992:  
  
Something really unusual happened today. I was helping out to seperate the last bundle of stuff that Tolkein had brought up (mainly canned foods and some stuff from camping stores) when the owner's voice came over the loudspeaker and said for all the women to get belowdecks STAT. He followed that with a cryptic comment about "she survived."  
  
Judging from the other refugees, I'd guess none of them had a clue either. From the crewmembers, you could tell they knew what the scoop was. Talcum, who is usually so calm and stoic you'd think he was stone, actually snarled. The reactions among other crew varied, but it   
appeared that whoever "she" was- liked was not an option. I saw fear (Neko-san), some disgust (Tolkein), hate (Kissu), and Lufa actually looked like she was gonna puke.  
  
Hmmm. I promised I'd intro the crew sometime. In brief, Talcum and Rogain are males of an amazon tribe somewhere in China. Lufa and Kissu are women of the same tribe (no they're not mates) who washed out as warriors for one reason or the other. The owner's a guy named Nate   
Brazil who's a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Ritsuko Fujii is the Captain. Tolkein is a short guy who seems to do the impossible on a regular basis. I get the impression that "Tolkein" is a nickname, but I'm not sure from what. The guy named Neko-san is East Indian, don't know what his real name is. I've seen Neko-san change. He's some sort of werecat.  
  
Naturally, I was curious. I peeked out of a window to see a fog rolling in. At high noon. With no land in sight and it being a brisk day with a strong wind blowing. Once these little details registered seeing a thick, completely obscuring, fog appear was a little unnerving.  
  
The wind continued. So did the fog. I heard music, and against all my plans, I started to go out on deck. I realized that my body was acting on its own initiative but couldn't seem to stop myself. I felt as if I were falling down a deep well, from which I might never recover.  
  
When I woke up, I found out that Tolkein had seen me and had belted me a good one. My jaw is sore but working. If what Kissu tells me of my likely fate had I walked out onto the deck is true, I owe Tolkein BIG time. I also understand why Lufa looks ill whenever you mention "Madame Lao" or the name of her ship.  
  
----------  
  
January 20, 1992:  
  
Found a "niche" I can work around here. Kasumi is still working in the kitchen. I'm in what has become the "map room" as we put together what's going on at any given point.  
  
I mean, I tried to be helpful on the deck. After I got tangled in the rigging or whatever they call that bunch of ropes the second time, they tried putting me in inventory. Uhm, did I mention I never got my sea legs?  
  
I'm also not as strong as that Atsuko, not as swift or acrobatic as the Amazons, not as experienced on boats as anyone else on this boat.  
  
So, instead, I'm stuck manning the radio, taking notes, and using one of the computers to make corrections and flags on a worldmap. So, today was kinda busy.   
  
Germany's got a massive set of volcanoes near the border of what used to be Poland. Poland isn't there anymore.  
  
Both poles are melted. Antarctica is tearing itself apart in massive volcanic actions. The arctic, however, is beginning to stabilize. When everything cools off, you'll be able to walk North from Quebec and end up in Russia without ever getting your feet near the water.  
  
The Home Islands are pretty much toast. What isn't underwater is getting buried in ash from the volcano that's SW of where Kobe used to be. The major technology/population centers left with minimal disruption are the American Midwest, Canada, Southern and Western Australia (except for the flooded bits).  
  
There are little areas here and there, but a number of the supply and distribution routes were wiped out and are being reworked now.  
  
Refugees are descending upon these "safe" areas and the results are unpleasant. Take in the extra people, in which case your own supplies are stretched past the breaking point, or start shooting 'cause that's the only way to keep from being overwhelmed.  
  
In three days it may be a moot point anyway. That's when we lose the moon.  
  
----------  
  
January 21, 1992  
  
We rescued someone else today. Unconscious, drifting, and looking like she'd been through a massive fight. It was one of the Sailor Senshi. I never thought they were this YOUNG.  
  
Anyway, if I've got the colors of her sentai uniform right, this is Sailor Venus. She's still unconcious, and it looks like she's got CLAW MARKS on her. Tolkein put his hand over her forehead and winced. Seems he's got some way of looking into someone's head when he does it. Guy does three impossible things before breakfast, what can I say.  
  
What he was gathering, and assuming it wasn't some kinda fever dream, is that there were these young girls on a mountain, looking out at all the devastation around them, when Madame Lao shows up. She sees a guy and a large number of recruits, so she invites 'em all aboard. After  
they're on this ship of hers, she has the guy thrown in a cage, and sics these heavily armed mercenary types on the girls to subdue them so that they can undergo various personality modification stuff.  
  
The girls, of course, are the Sailor Senshi in civilian costumes. They decide that keeping their secret identities is NOT worth being turned into submissive lesbian playtoys. One of 'em, Sailor Uranus, apparently leans that way but isn't into the S&M and humiliation stuff like Lao is. Big fight. Madame Lao turns into a tiger during the scuffle. Venus here doesn't know what happened to the others, just that the ship could regenerate damage up to a certain point and   
that this point was rapidly being exceeded when she got mauled and thrown overboard.  
  
Tolkein speculates that Lao had gotten over confident. He's seen it before, he says, where a successful criminal starts reaching a bit too far. He thinks Lao probably wanted the girls even more after it turned out they were the Senshi, and that she literally couldn't understand  
the concept that some people would rather die than have their minds reshaped in that manner. He states that Venus doesn't bend that way, and became a real wildcat. She actually started reaching for greater power than she'd ever done when it was merely her life that was at stake.   
  
Nathan calls it hubris. I call it stupid. Taking slaves? In this day and age? And with all the problems the survivors are having, somebody wants to make a profit off it all? You don't steal from the poor, they don't have anything worth the effort. That's why they're called poor. The rich have all sorts of ways of keeping what's theirs, so you scam them and they give it to you. Not that any monetary system or government is particularly stable right now. I mentioned that it was a wonder anyone could spare the time and money for sexslaves in all this, but Nathan muttered something about the darker side of human nature is always ready to seize an advantage and leap to the forefront.  
  
Oh sure, she has her floating sex palace running around, if it didn't get sunk by the Senshi. As I've seen on this ship, there's a lot of strangeness out there. Sooner or later, Lao is going to piss off an even bigger shark than she is.  
  
Maybe she already has.  
  
----------------  
  
January 22, 1992  
  
Sleeping beauty woke up, screaming. Apparently she had some kinda pet cat who they think shuffled off the mortal coil when the floods hit.Between that, seeing the dead bloated bodies of former classmates, then narrowly avoiding becoming some deranged immortal pirate's sextoy...   
  
Yeah, I can see where that'd make even one of the Senshi want to curl up and scream a few times. She got over it, of course, the same way we all have. We're just putting everything off until we have the luxury of going to pieces. THEN we'll all quietly fall apart. Right now,   
surviving is enough to keep us occupied.  
  
After Venus there shifted back to her normal form, we left her alone for a few hours. She tells us that she can contact the others later, after we reach port.  
  
Wakayama or Okayama look feasible as ports. The plagues (results of having bodies washing up on shore) and such haven't touched these regions too much. We can unload at either of those, try to make a living. Me and Kasumi will debark there with the rest of the refugees. This strange little ship will continue to operate in the area while the rest of us settle into survival mode.  
  
Tomorrow we make visual contact, first with Okayama. Tomorrow also is the impact day for Fenris. Should be interesting.  
  
------------------  
  
January 23, 1992  
  
We've found a nice little village in the Okayama region. We're staying there. The ship is in port but will be leaving during the night.  
  
The night sky is... different. A large hunk of the moon survived, it's got a big wobble right now. It wasn't a straight impact, more a glancing blow. Still there's a "bite" out of it that shows up when the moon's lined up right as the whole thing rotates. The meteor showers should really start in another three days. We're settled in and it looks like we'll be able to fit into this society.  
  
When we were saying goodbye to the crew, Kasumi handed out a list of names, and Nathan or Fujii and their crew will post copies of it. It's an idea. There's a bulletin board here near the port, listing the names of survivors who still hope to be reunited with family. The idea caught on, and now they'll add another one which'll list other refugee sites when they become available. Just find the name you're looking for in a long list of others. My job here is to put the names and such into a database program, that way you can search the whole thing easily.  
Boring as hell, but it's useful work and lots of people come by to talk.   
  
Phones are still out, long range communication is spotty. A lot of the satellites were taken down by debris accompanying Loki. We expect the rest of them to go out when the debris from the moon hits.  
  
Kasumi still has some hope that Doctor Tofu will have survived. She also mentioned this Ranma Saotome, our sister Akane, and Sakura Shinguchi - the old samurai woman from down the block. I tend to agree that old Shingei-san is entirely too tough to die from a mere tidal wave or meteor impact.  
  
They talked it over and put together a little board. They'll fax sheets over to other ships and towns, and anyone who is genuinely looking for someone else will have a chance to find them.  
  
Speaking of which I've actually met a couple of celebrities now. Of course, they're pulling normal jobs now, and they're refugees like everyone else. If things ever get even vaguely back to normal, though, they'll be contacts.  
  
Anyway, back to bed. Lot of work to do tomorrow. -   
  
=================  
  
i'd been getting a LOT of negative e-mail about the "Man Among Men" (now taken over by Short Yes as "The Few, The Proud, The Male Gender") concept, with Plague of the Four Horsemen introducing a change. It occurred to me after people were done throwing stones in my direction  
after "Enslaved" (and similar stories that some people really really hated) that i'd at least managed to get the beehive moving.  
  
i _have_, after all, been trying to come up with new twists on the old stories. i've been told that it's all been done before. Sounded like a challenge to me...  
  
As for "Man Among Men" yes, the American military forces proved once again that Military Intelligence is an oxymoron when they blew up a biological weapons facility in Iraq. NOT using firebombs. This happened in real life BTW. The change in "Man Among Men" was a mutation in a virus that made it a LOT more effective than it could have been.   
  
back to Ragnarock:  
  
Big chunks of meteor coming down, chewing up the local real estate. The missiles and such are few and far between (more resource consumptive and they're here to claim resources, not use them.)  
  
The aliens don't even need to make an appearance, they could be REALLY alien and have an inscrutable motive. My original take on them was "let's keep the natives pinned down while we go after the planetary resources elsewhere, by the time they recover we'll be gone." So they  
wreck the majority of the planets, send the remains along their chosen flight path, then leave. As Earth isn't as resource rich as some of the others, they'll leave it.   
  
Each chapter details a little further how character X is coping, and reveals a little more detail on how the world in general has been affected.  
  
Ranma in China, finds an injured amazon girl. Together, they try to overcome the language barrier and survive as the area is devastated by earthquakes and new volcanoes forming along the faultlines. Genma has been seperated from Ranma, Shampoo separated from her village (which was being evacuated due to the ash from one of the new volcanoes.)   
  
Akane spends time trapped on a raft with Kuno. She can't swim. This is pretty dark in and of itself. Making it funny would be the scene where Akane meets Ranma and starts telling Kuno that she can't marry him because family honor demands she marries Ranma. Its possible she'd be VERY nice to Ranma to avoid this fate. (Figure that lost at sea, no hope of rescue, they're the only two people around, things said and done that might leave Akane wishing that she HAD died.)  
  
Of course, if someone is meaner than i am, Akane could have been rescued by Madame Lao and converted/brainwashed to lesbian sex slave before the end of Chapter 2.  
  
Senshi being heroic outside of Japan. i'm told that their powers aren't reliant on the planet so much as on the principles/concepts behind them. If this is so, their power levels wouldn't be affected by their planet being consumed. If not, then by the end of this: Jupiter and Saturn will have their power levels reduced, Mercury and Venus unaffected as their planets are too close to the sun for the raiders, Moon would have a major power reduction, the three outermost planets would likewise be gone and not supplying any manna to their Senshi.   
  
Various other characters coming together as the world begins to recover from the cataclysm before Ragnarock strikes.  
  
Nuku nuku and Ryunnosuke are from "Nuku Nuku." i can see Kasumi making friends with Nuku. Nanami Rokugo is a pyrokinetic JHS student from "Phantom Quest Corporation."   
  
Eventually the UN Spacy battlecruiser "Yamato" takes off to contact the Juraians for help. Shampoo watching tons of space opera anime as "research."  
  
Yes, this is THAT fic. Akane "I'm a spacefighter pilot, too, you know" Tendo in her B-Wing. Nurse Kasumi! Ryouga getting lost during a space battle in his Y-Wing. Shampoo singing the "Star Blazers" theme as she goes into battle in her powerarmor. Makoto Mizuhara and Keichi Morisato trying to figure out how some of Washu's gadgets work so they can fix them. Chinese Amazon Space Marines! Belldandy feeling guilty because Marller was keeping her busy/exhausted while all of this was going on. Tenchi & Co feeling guilty because they were off on the "Planet Of Hot Springs" and got sidetracked.  
  
The crew of the "Myou no Maru" appears in Featherbrite's Tale, and is mentioned as the "Chacha Maru" in Happi Days. Madame Lao appears courtesy of Jim Bader. She's a survivor, after all.  
  
Any engineers who want to correct me about the sizes/masses involved, don't bother. I am NOT the engineer, and have no idea how much mass Shinjuku actually has. Change the story to make whatever corrections you want and take it over if it bothers you that much.  
  



	2. Shampoo's Story

Ragnarock chapter 2: Wild Horses and Mountain Girls  
  
Disclaimer: Ranma Saotome, Genma Saotome, Shampoo, Cologne, Nichieju Chinese Amazons, are all copyright Rumiko Takahashi. This is Darkness To Light in flavor.  
  
Yes, Ranma and Shampoo are going to be OOC. Honestly, in this sort of situation, i'd expect it.  
  
---------------  
  
January 12, 1992  
  
Ranma grunted and pushed the rock off of him. "Visit the Bayankala Mountain Range. We'll be safe there. Stupid Oyaji."   
  
Ranma took stock of his situation. His father Genma, gone. They'd gone to some hotshot training ground called Jusenkyo, Genma suggesting that if the sky was going to fall, they ought to get out of the city. And where better than some martial arts training ground up in the mountains?  
  
OK, some big rock was gonna hit the Earth. Big deal. Killed a bunch'a dinosaurs a few million years ago. Ain't got martial arts in front of it, so it didn't concern *him.* Talking about freakin' aliens and ice ages and lotsa other stuff Ranma just didn't understand.  
  
Oyaji had always said, Martial Arts is everything. If it doesn't have Martial Arts in front of it, it wasn't something Ranma should focus on.  
  
Ranma looked out over the smouldering landscape and cursed his father for being an idiot. Not for the first time. Not even the first time today.  
  
They'd stood near the edge of this cliff, looking down at the training site they'd come to find. Then Ranma had glanced up and saw it. Trails of fire cutting through the sky. Falling stars. Naturally, he'd made a wish. Considering the last time he'd eaten, it had been for food.  
  
Naturally he hadn't gotten it. One of those falling stars had hit somewhere to the Southeast. It had hit fairly hard too.  
  
His father had vanished down a slope when the quake hit, oddly enough he'd gone right over the edge towards the very training site they'd been heading for. When the quake had finished, the whatever-they-were started hitting. Lumps of really hot damn rocks that exploded when they  
hit.   
  
By the time Ranma had gotten down the slope, there was no sign of his father. There were a lot of little empty pools and burning bamboo poles. There was a hut, and it had taken a hit, but it was mainly intact. He'd gone out to one of the remaining pools to get water. All he'd done was scoop up two handfuls of water and splash his face with it to get the dirt and sweat off.  
  
He'd freaked out until he found a Japanese tour book in the hut that explained the Curses Of Jusenkyo. The teapot, battered and burned along the bottom, immediately became a prized possession.  
  
Ranma had claimed the hut, planning to stay there until someone else showed up. Problem was he'd been outside again and he'd discovered that there were aftershocks. With another load of rocks, some of which had been dumped directly on him this time.  
  
So Ranma had to face that his stupid father was either dead or had left the area. The little hut was still mainly standing, but the ash beginning to drift down after this last shake was not a good sign. Ranma had travelled all over Japan, he couldn't tell you who was currently a member of the Japanese Senate, but he did know what lots of volcanic ash meant.  
  
He'd been hoping that the red glow to the Southeast had been something else.  
  
Ranma ransacked the contents of the hut, discarding many things as useless. Canned foods - keep. Old vinyl records - leave. Flashlight - keep. Calculator - leave. Old books (might have resale value, or they might have information on how to permanently cure this damn curse.  
As they were all in Chinese, he couldn't be sure what they were.) - keep, but use a sack so that he could dump them if they proved to be too much trouble. Medical supplies - in his pack as secure as he could make them. Knife- keep, not as a weapon but as this was a fair sized  
sharp knife, a survival tool. And so on. He hated to abandon the place. He'd only been there one day and one night, but it was shelter and his father *might* still show up. Unfortunately, if he waited too long he had a feeling he'd be stuck here.  
  
Ranma lifted the sack containing the books and other "expendables" after settling the pack of necessaries. He eyed the hut one last time then left. He didn't have much time if the way the ash coming down was any indication.  
  
Upon reaching the edge of the training ground, he glanced back a final time. He couldn't even see the hut through the thick ash fall, and Ranma adjusted the scarf he'd placed around his nose and mouth again. Belatedly, he realized that maybe he should have left a note. Too late  
now.  
  
Ranma trudged off, deciding that as Southeast was a *bad* direction, he should try going Northwest, then circle around the worst of the area on the way back to Japan.  
  
-----------  
  
January 13, 1992:  
  
Ranma spent a few minutes staring down at the girl in indecision.  
  
She was bloodied and battered, and it looked like she had been in one of the landslides triggered by the quakes. His supplies weren't that great, and he was getting pretty damn tired. He was having trouble surviving as it was. He had no business messing with some...  
  
"Oh to hell with it," grumbled Ranma as he went down the slope. It took him a few minutes to reach her. It wasn't that far down, but simply leaping down might trigger another slide or open up a crevasse in the cracked ground. Slow and cautious had become the pace after he'd experienced both.  
  
Closer examination revealed that the girl had probably done something similar, just hadn't recovered quite quickly enough to avoid being hit. Broken arm, broken leg - two places, ribs had taken a pretty good hit, so had her head. Ranma had been practicing martial arts his whole life, so he knew a few things about injuries. He moved the bones back into place, wincing and glad the girl was unconscious, and then began splinting them. He used some of the old scrolls that had wooden dowels and tied them into place with strips of cloth from the girl's own clothes. A small backpack was located, and this one had some odd things. Shampoo? Why bother carrying shampoo when there's an active volcano not nearly far enough away? Women!  
  
That left him with an unconscious girl, her pack, his own pack, and his sack. Ranma looked back and forth before putting the girl's backpack into place on her, then using a rope in her pack to tie her into place in a fireman's carry position. Then he slung his backpack over one shoulder, lifted the sack, and was moving again.   
  
It quickly became obvious that there was something wrong with the air. He'd carried heavier weights for longer periods without a dull ache in his lungs. Therefore, it wasn't *his* fault. Not any weakness on *his* part. That must mean... Ranma wasn't sure what it was. Maybe he should have stayed awake in more of his classes. Whatever went wrong with air.  
  
--------  
  
Shampoo groaned and opened her eyes slowly. She'd jumped down, taking a short cut to rejoin the rest of the Tribe, the ground had crumbled, rocks had started coming down all around her, and then...   
  
Then she was getting her first bonbori practice from her Great-grandmother, and seeing her Mother turn away from having such a weak daughter, and then she'd...  
  
Shampoo winced as all the various pains began making themselves known. So she'd come near enough death to experience anew her life. Clearly, however, she was not dead. She hurt entirely too much for that.  
  
Now she could see a little bit more. One arm and one leg were splinted. Various damp cuts and scrapes, the tears in the fabric around them bloody. Conclusion: one of the village Healers had found her. Probably an apprentice as the bindings were well done but not expertly so. She had been laid down with a thin blanket underneath her, and the idiot had put her down so that she had a rock digging in just below her right hip.   
  
Shampoo slowly raised her head to see if it was that stupid Sash who had come across her. Her eyes widened when she saw her benefactor.  
  
Some redhaired girl tending a fire nearby, setting a kettle out to heat. An Outsider Woman?!   
  
Shampoo gritted her teeth in a snarl. This wasn't good. Showing any weakness in front of an Outsider Woman was frowned on to say the least. The problem was that Shampoo wondered if she *could* kill the girl. Yes, she was a tough Amazon warrior. However, she felt about as weak  
as a newborn kitten, was pretty badly injured, and had not eaten in some time.  
  
The Outsider drew closer, having taken a battered cup of some kind and dipped it into a bucket also near the fire. She held it out, smiling and nodding.  
  
"You are an Outsider Woman, I can accept no aid from you." Shampoo glared at the girl.  
  
The girl replied in some incomprehensible language, frowning and sniffing at the cup, then muttering something else.  
  
Even though Shampoo was nearly hungry enough to eat her own clothes, she tried to refuse the girl again. The problem came when she tried to shake her head and slap the offending cup away.   
  
When the wave of pain and dizziness had passed, Shampoo realized something *very* wrong had just occurred. She could taste rabbit stew (or more like rabbit soup, and not very good soup either) in her mouth. The Outsider was still there, sitting close enough by that Shampoo  
could have reached out and struck her. Leaning close enough that Shampoo could have driven a sword through her without warning. Except that she couldn't seem to move. Her body had somehow gotten extremely heavy. It took a few moments for her to realize why. Her brief glimpse of her clothes earlier had shown large segments of bloody gashes and cuts. She was probably missing a lot of blood right now.  
  
Shampoo cursed that she should be this weak and vulnerable when there was an Outsider Woman here. Now she would be killed. Everyone knew how tricky and dishonorable, how sneaky and hateful Outsider Women were when dealing with Amazons!  
  
The Outsider mumbled something in that language again. Then took a big mouthful of the contents of that cup. Then...  
  
Shampoo stiffened involuntarily as the Outsider kissed her, passing the stew from her mouth to Shampoo's own. She felt her throat stroked and involuntarily swallowed.  
  
The Outsider did this three more times, then said something else in that incomprehensible tongue, then moved away. Shampoo felt another blanket being moved to cover her, then spent several minutes blinking up at the night sky.   
  
Great Grandmother was going to kill her.  
  
Not only had she accepted aid from an Outsider Woman. Not only did she owe life-debt to an Outsider Woman. An Outsider Woman had just given her a reasonable fascimile of the Kiss Of Marriage. Shampoo felt tears come to her eyes that had nothing to do with physical pain.  
  
She could barely move, though she felt some strength returning now that she'd gotten some food. Still she could barely move, and some Outsider Woman had backed her into the wall. Shampoo wasn't quite sure *what* Amazon Law said about occasions like this.  
  
With an effort, Shampoo levered herself up to get yet another surprise.  
  
The redhaired girl was gone. Instead some boy with black hair was tending the fire. The boy saw her leaning up and said something in the same odd language that the girl had used. Brother and sister maybe? Or husband and wife? They looked to be about the same age.  
  
Exhaustion took Shampoo before she could decide what she was hoping for.  
  
---------  
  
January 14, 1992:  
  
Ranma was suddenly aware that the girl tied to his back was awake and some of her strength had returned. Her saying something that sounded very unhappy and tugging at her ropes was his first clue.  
  
Then she apparently saw where they were and stopped moving. "Aiyaaah."  
  
"Actually I agree," said Ranma. Long drop. Lots of sharp rocks. Narrow ledge. Definitely an "Aiyaah."  
  
The girl mumbled something that sounded angry and frightened at the same time.  
  
"Look, I could drop you off here but you probably wouldn't like that."  
  
More mutterings. In Chinese, Ranma supposed. Pity he didn't speak much more than "Aiyaah" and "Ni Hao."  
  
That burning in his chest had subsided though he was feeling kind of nauseous of late. Maybe there had been something wrong with that rabbit. He couldn't tell from the girl if she was affected by it, she'd spent a lot of time sleeping. Though her coloration looked better since  
she'd eaten.   
  
Still, he couldn't tell.   
  
Especially at this angle.   
  
"Ni hao," Ranma tried.  
  
It took a few moments, and when it finally came it sounded kind of petulant. "Ni hao."  
  
Ranma tried talking to her, even though he knew she didn't speak Japanese. She was the first (and only) human being he'd seen since he'd gotten seperated from (stupid baka) oyaji. He hadn't realized how used he had been to be around someone.  
  
And in this blasted, destroyed, mainly silent landscape, it was all too easy to imagine that they were the last people alive. Had there been a nuclear war? How could he tell?  
  
Another tremor went through the ground, causing Ranma to flail and grab the cliff-face for support.  
  
Ranma finally found what looked like a fairly safe place and unloaded his burdens. There was running water, there wasn't any rocks looking ready to roll over the site, and sufficient flat areas to spread a camp.  
  
The girl looked him over, then made a show of looking around for something.  
  
"I don't understand," admitted Ranma while the girl tried to be more obvious in looking around.  
  
The girl said something that sounded uncomplimentary from where she sat.  
  
Ranma sighed and stretched out where the ropes had bitten into his skin. "I don't understand Chinese, and I ain't no good at charades."  
  
The girl said something, another question if he got the tone right.  
  
"Ye got me. Whatever it is you're askin'." Ranma sighed and stumbled a little. "Sure ain't doing too well here. How's your leg?"  
  
The girl blinked at him a few times, then pointed a finger at herself. "Shampoo." Then she pointed a finger at Ranma.  
  
Ranma blinked. Yeah, he'd found some bottles of shampoo in her pack. Was her hair *that* important to her? It wasn't like he understood women at all. His father had kept dragging him around all his life. It wasn't like he'd even spent *this* much time around them before. Maybe girls were like that?  
  
He'd wondered about it ever since he'd found the bottles of shampoo and scroll of scalp massage techniques in the girl's possessions. When everything was going to heck all around them, this girl wanted her hair washed?  
  
Well, he'd have to see what he could do. It was a break, at least.  
  
-----------  
  
January 19, 1992:  
  
"Fujiko, don't do that." Ranma sighed and pulled the girl back from the cliff edge. The odd girl giggled and snuggled up against him in response.  
  
Ranma tried to ignore the girl's attempts to cuddle. He'd started calling her Fujiko because she had hair that had that sort of shade of Mount Fuji purple and acted like a child.  
  
Though she wasn't exactly an unpleasant companion. She was hobbling along on crutches now, slowing him down a lot, but what the heck. He wasn't entirely sure he could face it if Japan was in as bad a shape as that village they'd just gone through.  
  
She was a better listener than Oyaji. Nicer on the eyes too. Not that that was saying much.  
  
She hadn't mentioned shampoo since that one time he'd washed her hair so he must have done a good job with that scroll. Who'd have thought that there was some special technique for washing hair? HAD to be a girl thing. Actually she hadn't mentioned much of anything since then. The most she'd done was make inarticulate noises. And smiled a lot. Weird.  
  
As for the village, that'd been a real mess. Looked like everyone had packed up and left in a hurry, then there'd been looters, then the looters had gone.   
  
Ranma couldn't even tell what the name had been.   
  
The reason the place had been abandoned was easy enough to see. There had only been a thin trickle of water from any of the wells that had hand pumps, and no electricity to speak of for anything else. With the roads cracked from the earthquakes, the inhabitants had relocated. Without water, there would have been no way to fight the fires that were inevitable in volcano country. Without supplies or electricity or water...  
  
There hadn't been much to find that the looters had missed. Mainly some canned food in a discarded rucksack that had apparently been left behind.  
  
Not that he was complaining. He'd ate four cans of tuna, Fujiko had eaten two. Canned carrots and peas had likewise fallen to the two nearly bottomless pits.  
  
Still, it was a temporary measure and Ranma knew it. Though if they ran across an all-you-can-eat buffet, Ranma suspected that they'd do damage of Godzilla proportions.  
  
No, what they needed to find was civilization. Maybe get back to Japan.  
  
----------  
  
January 23, 1992:   
  
Ranma was awake, watching the last embers of the campfire, when IT happened. His attention was drawn by the flicker of light, and he glanced up to see something that he would have had trouble crediting.  
  
A whimper from Fujiko indicated that she had seen it too.  
  
The longtime companion of the moon, always showing the same face towards the earth, had a flickering cloud about it. This was not the usual lowlying clouds that were omnipresent in the mountains. This was a cloud that looked for all the world as if it were swallowing up the moon.  
  
Fujiko whimpered again and crawled to Ranma's side, a child in need of assurance.  
  
Ranma admitted that he could use some reassurance himself and merely held her until the child-woman fell asleep.  
  
------------  
  
January 25, 1992:  
  
"Ohhh, my head hurts."  
  
"Do you remember anything, great granddaughter?"  
  
Shampoo held her head briefly. "That boy that was with me. Ranma. He called me 'Fujiko' and took care of me. What happened to him?"  
  
"That girl with the red hair?" Cologne chuckled.  
  
"It's a boy. He turns into a girl with cold water. Not that we found a lot of ANY temperature of water." Shampoo considered for a moment. "At least I *think* he's a he."  
  
"Oh yes, that's the way the springs of Jusenkyo work. I merely wondered if you knew." Cologne cackled again. "He defeated you, didn't he?"  
  
"I think it was an accident," complained Shampoo. "How did you find us? Oh yeah."  
  
"Memory's still a bit scrambled, is it?" Cologne looked out over the landscape. "Well, we've found a place to establish a temporary settlement. What I want to know is what *you* are going to do."  
  
Shampoo sighed and checked her leg. "You fixed it? Good. I guess I'll give him the Kiss Of Marriage. He's not a bad fellow, strong, and he *did* defeat me when I tried to drink that gallon of water."  
  
"You'll travel with him then," pressed Cologne. "To see what lies in Japan?"  
  
"Might as well. I'm not needed here." Shampoo managed a brief return to perky.  
  
Cologne nodded. "Well, it looks like most of the country is in shambles. Beijing survived, but the stories getting to us now are that they have their hands full just trying to survive. Most of the coastal areas, including Hong Kong and Shanghai, were wiped out. If you can believe the reports. So, if you do marry that fellow, and you *do* go to Japan, keep in mind your old village and great grandmother. And *try* to be a little more careful, Shampoo."  
  
"Okay," agreed Shampoo. "Though I may need you to use that shiatsu technique for languages on me."  
  
"THAT old thing?" Cologne shook her head. "That'll make you sound like a ditz, you know. Wouldn't it be better to learn the language the normal way?"  
  
"Maybe, Great Grandmother, maybe. You want to come? I think I'll go greet my husband in proper Amazon fashion."  
  
Cologne snorted. "It's late Shampoo, and the boy was exhausted by the time he reached us. Greet him in the morning."  
  
----------  
  
January 26, 1992:  
  
This wasn't the first time that "Fujiko" had crawled up next to him during their sleep. In the mountains and thereafter, the two had often slept close enough to share body warmth.  
  
This WAS the first time that Fujiko had kissed him on the lips, then perkily declared "Good Morning, Airen!"  
  
After peeling himself from the ceiling, having that dried up old ghoul explain that by their laws he was now Shampoo's betrothed, and giving with stumbled denials for two hours, Ranma began to calm down.  
  
Cologne's simple stance on the matter was, he could do a lot worse, and frankly they'd better get a move on before plagues really started to cut down on the travel accomodations.  
  
"Plagues?" Ranma had inquired with a certain looming horror. Martial artists he could fight. Things that attacked the moon, volcanoes, and plagues were a bit off his preferred opponents.  
  
Cologne nodded. Volcanoes not only spewed out pyroclastic materials, lava, and ash, they frequently discharged poisonous gas. This and the tidal waves meant that there were areas with lots and lots of dead bodies. That tended to produce plagues. Among other things.  
  
Cologne pointed out that with satellites down and some sort of ionosphere disturbance, communication wasn't nearly as good as it used to be. So she couldn't tell him what was going on in his homeland. He'd simply have to go himself. Shampoo would accompany him, and if they couldn't find a way to Japan, then they could always return to the village.  
  
Ranma spent another four hours in shock. Then tried to sneak off by himself.  
  
Fujiko, which was to say Shampoo, took off after her husband. Cologne merely chuckled and smiled, young people being so full of energy.  
  
And if the future was uncertain, well, Cologne was old enough to remember other times with similar uncertainty. Taking a deep puff on her pipe, Cologne briefly wondered if she had been cursed to live in interesting times.  
  
It wouldn't be the first time, after all.  
  
===================  
  
end second part of Ragnarock.  
  
someone was supposed to continue this. i'm not sure who, that was two catastrophic failures of the computer ago. It's also been a long time since i've heard anything. i had some ideas for Chapter Two, and this is them. Ideally, this series would deal with different groups as they came together and started rebuilding.  
  
No, it isn't necessarily a Shampoo + Ranma story. They COULD end up together, Shampoo thinks they should, but another pairing is certainly likely.  
  
They'd be a bit OOC. Frankly the mood here wouldn't support the manga tendency for everyone to be thoughtless jerks with a limited attention span. In this sort of setting, such people usually don't last very long.  
  
=================  



	3. Akane's Act

Ragnarock 3  
  
Akane's Act  
  
--------------  
  
She'd watched the world around her die. She'd survived the earthquake that had crushed one of her friends beneath a fallen ceiling. That friend had died, pinned by parts of the ceiling too heavy for the others to lift. Even if they had, it would have been too late.  
  
The High School had turned out not to be a wise choice for shelter.  
  
She'd survived the wave. Her other friend had helped her briefly. Then when they were seperated, she'd flailed around - trying desperately to stay afloat. Then HE had come and rescued her.  
  
A week had gone by in his leaky little boat. Death all around them. She'd desperately clung to him. Said and done things in the desperation and heat of the moment, bodies pressed together within the tiny world of the boat. She'd operated on instinct and had been overwhelmingly in need of confirmation that she had been alive.  
  
She was Akane Tendo, and she was in Hell.  
  
Relatively.  
  
Kuno regarded his "fragile flower" as a possession. He still regarded himself as the heroic samurai, and Akane at times wondered what exactly he was seeing. He'd always been at least partially off in his own little world, and now this was even more evident.  
  
There wasn't much to do on a rowboat that had been washed out to sea. Especially when you couldn't swim. Talking to Kuno was bizarre and disjointed as he faded in and out of his world of epic samurai.   
  
She was completely dependent on the madman, however. She had tried several times to teach herself how to swim. She awoke on the boat shortly thereafter. And had to endure lectures from Kuno on her safety. Kuno was able to get food and water, manuevering the boat to where debris often concealed supplies.  
  
She'd eaten wet cat food. It was amazing how hungry you could get. That wasn't the worst thing, however. The thirst. The constant overpowering thirst.  
  
Akane sat back in the boat, briefly envying Yuka. It had taken only a minute or so for Yuka to die, her blood pooling in the remains of the gym before the wave had hit. Sayuri might still be alive. Sayuri was a good swimmer. Even though Akane had seen her go under and not come back up again, Akane thought that Sayuri might still be alive out there. One half of the Dynamic Duo - the two friends that had been closer than twins. Maybe.  
  
Akane blinked and weakly croaked. Land. She could see land! They were saved!  
  
Tatewaki Kuno grinned like a madman and began rowing. He could finally make it official, and Akane would be his forever!  
  
--------  
  
The village was one of several hundred exactly like it that had formed in the wake of the Disaster.  
  
Survivors had gathered and banded together. Either you contributed or you were driven off. It didn't matter if your ancestry was noble, you had a bokken, or you were the most sought after girl of Furinkan High School.  
  
The attempts to get Akane working on typically feminine chores had been such disasters that she'd found herself being shunned.  
  
Kuno had quickly found himself in construction, and Akane had ended up in the same field. Even now, she felt, she was being forced to confront her mistakes. Especially as she was often correcting Kuno's mistakes.  
  
She had wept when the moon had died. She had wept when one of the nurses of the community had pronounced the diagnosis. One that she felt had doomed her as much as if she had been the one to catch that support beam in the gym.  
  
Pregnant.  
  
And there was only one possible candidate for "Daddy". If Kuno learned of it, he would continue trying to get her to marry him, even more insufferable than he was now.  
  
If he survived. He wasn't pulling his weight, still wrapped up in some samurai fantasy and proclaiming his family's great wealth. Except that he didn't have that wealth anymore.  
  
If this had somehow happened before the sky had fallen, Akane would have known where to go and what to do. She wouldn't have had the baby. She knew where to go for the rituals so the baby's soul didn't wander the Earth. She could have convinced herself that it was just a parasitic blob of tissue, like a cancer, just as the European women always said.  
  
After the sky had fallen, it was more difficult.  
  
Now a baby was a precious resource. So many had died, after all. Medical supplies and personnel were strained. The rituals were not available. The comfortable womb of modern Japanese life had been ripped away, supplanted with this clinging to survival in a thrown-together shack.   
  
Akane didn't weep any more. Water was a precious resource too.  
  
----------  
  
A ship arriving stirred the village up.  
  
Akane set aside the load she was carrying to find out why people were scurrying about with so much excitement.  
  
Some village in Japan was making a "Survivor List" that contained lists of names. Akane was the one elected to build a set of message boards for posting the list. She did so, unenthusiastically, but she did a lot of her best work when she wasn't trying to get creative or trying to impress someone. She'd rather read the list than build the wooden displays, with the plastic outer sheet to protect the precious papers from the weather.  
  
Akane had considered herself a martial artist, but after some disastrous beginnings had become a decent carpenter. As long as she kept it simple and wasn't trying to show off.  
  
After the building of the stands, Akane had to repair one of the dock buildings from where yet another fight had broken out between Tatewaki Kuno and someone who wouldn't put up with him.  
  
Upon seeing Kuno knocked flat and being carried off, Akane smiled for the first time in longer than she cared to think.  
  
"Did you see that?" One of the dockworkers exclaimed with a grin.  
  
Her companion nodded. "One punch, and *wham!*"   
  
"Kuno may be a loudmouthed idiot, but he's a good fighter." The first dockworker continued. "Damn it was good to see him on the receiving end for once."  
  
Akane listened to the two while getting to work. The process was almost automatic by now, the only thing different was where a wall had been burst open in a different pattern than Kuno's usual fights.  
  
"Not bad, especially as they were both girls." The first dockworker said, grabbing a handtruck and shifting barrels. "Any idea who they were?"  
  
"Nah, some travelers taking the ship back to Okayama. They got here just in time."  
  
Akane listened. Measure, mark, measure again, cut, fit, nail. She could do this in her sleep after the past two months. Sometimes, when she awakened, she could swear that she *had*.  
  
"The group in Okayama looks to be three times our size. Looks like it'll be a major hub for information."  
  
Akane briefly wondered if maybe her sisters or one of her friends had made it to Okayama. Or maybe she herself ought to go. A fresh start, just leave in the middle of the night without a word to Tatewaki Kuno. Akane finished her work, then wiped sweat off her brow.  
  
She caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of one of the windows and spent a moment staring, though she saw herself in similar reflections daily. Would her sisters even recognize her? Long days in the sun had darkened her skin until she almost looked as if she had hailed from Okinawa. Her long hair had been too much trouble to maintain, and so one night had hacked most of it off. Then the months of steady work in carpentry, after she'd finally gotten the hang of "measure twice THEN cut", and lean meals had removed much of her remaining baby fat and tightened up her musculature.   
  
Some, back in her Furinkan days, had described her as cute. Nobody had recently, and Akane doubted anyone ever would. With the possible exception of Tatewaki. No, even he had stopped using such terms.  
  
The decision firmed a little in her mind. No, she had nothing to keep her here. No friends. No family. Certainly not Tatewaki Kuno, lord samurai and legend in his own mind. If she were to go, she had to go SOON. In another month her pregnancy would be obvious and Kuno would be a constant problem instead of alternating which girl he was pursuing at the moment. Though, of course, he actually wanted ALL the girls who'd caught his fancy.   
  
"Hey, Akane, here's the list," one of the dockworkers handed Akane several sheets of green and white computer paper. "Tack it up, will ya? Then take it easy, girl, ya been pushin' yourself hard lately."  
  
Akane bit back yelling at the woman. Like any of them could take it easy. She simply slammed tacks home in the corners of the notice, putting the thing up where...  
  
Akane started as her eye first caught a detail on the paper. Then merely stared. It was printed in romaji, which wasn't uncommon for print outs of this kind. Particularly the ones that would be circulated among different countries.  
  
Takanori, Junichi  
Takeuchi, Naoko  
Teizoku, Shinji  
Tendo, Kasumi  
Tendo, Nabiki  
Tetsubara, Nakao  
  
Akane continued to stare, her mouth shaping the two names of import to her. Then shot to the top of the paper. Okayama refugee center.  
  
Wild horses couldn't keep her away now.  
  
-------------  
  
Tatewaki Kuno was furious. For all of fifteen minutes. Then one thing had led to another and now Tatewaki Kuno was merely unconscious.  
  
He was one of the best fighters in the village, tougher than he looked, certainly had an excellent recovery time. He was tolerated for this.  
  
Upon finding that not only was his future wife, the beauteous Akane Tendo, missing - but that she had been concealing her pregnancy from him? He'd practically been frothing at the mouth. Then he'd made a mistake.  
  
Tatewaki Kuno WAS one of the best fighters around. However, those who had survived the earthquakes, plagues, and rough living conditions since The Fall were used to tackling big problems with ingenuity and teamwork. They were not easily cowed.  
  
So the great Tatewaki Kuno found that when he overstepped his bounds and struck down an unarmed man for trying to silence him, he had been roped and tied and then beaten into unconsciousness. Then chained and put in a prison cell.   
  
Food was still scarce. There was a debate as to his fate but keeping him in prison and feeding him was not an option that anyone was considering. Hanging him until dead, exiling him, or simply putting him in a box and setting him adrift all were being discussed. So was just bricking up the entry to the cell.   
  
Tatewaki Kuno had not made many friends. In fact, he had consistantly insisted that his being Japanese and nobility made him much more than those around him, who were largely not Japanese.  
  
Kuno had, however, made one friend. One who had mainly felt sympathetic for the clearly delusional fellow.   
  
Which is how, when the jury came down to inform Tatewaki Kuno that he was to be exiled, that someone had already snuck away with the samurai.  
  
By the time they had finished searching the village, the single sail fishing boat had drifted far out to sea.  
  
---------  
  
The trip hadn't taken very long. Akane had gotten her sea legs what seemed like a lifetime ago. She still couldn't swim, but many sailors refused to learn anyway. She had suffered, but she had also risen above that suffering. She'd relied on no one but herself, and felt the stronger for it.  
  
No, it was not the same Akane Tendo who had fought her way past perverted boys every morning in school. That had been four months ago, it had been a lifetime ago.  
  
Tomorrow would be landfall at Okayama. Tomorrow she'd be united with her family. Or at least part of it. Had her father survived?  
  
Voices on the boat caught her ear soon enough, disturbing her solitude.  
  
"...can't believe some of the conditions at these places..."  
  
"...they're doing the best they can, Saotome-san. Most of these people have never even been camping before, much less had to grow crops or irrigate fields. There's no electricity, no gasoline, and darn little in the way of supplies or know how."  
  
Akane nodded in quiet agreement. Things were rough all over. Though something struck her as familiar about that name. Where had she heard the name "Saotome" before? She peered closer, trying to discern whether it was one of her classmates from Furinkan.  
  
The girl with bright red hair was talking to a large tough-looking older fellow. She thought she recognized the older one as one of the sailors aboard this old tub.  
  
"I know that. Yeesh, I've dug enough latrines to qualify it as endurance training. Both Shampoo and me are hoping this lead pans out."  
  
"Well, if any group will have the leads on your parents, it'll be in Okayama. They've got the best working computer system there. Don't know what they get the power from."  
  
Akane tried to place the girl. She couldn't recall seeing someone like that at Furinken. Certainly that hair color made her stand out.  
  
"There ain't much else. Figure we might check it out, and if they ain't there we'll just leave our names and head back to that Unryuu farm. Akari said we're welcome and she could certainly use some help there." The girl shrugged. "Got any hot water?"  
  
"If you can stand to be a girl, I'd suggest staying that way for now, Ranma. Heating up the water uses fuel we can best use elsewhere. You can turn back into a boy in Okayama."  
  
"Suppose you're right. Don't have ta like it, though."  
  
Akane blinked, not sure *what* to make of that odd exchange. Still, she had the girl's name now. "Ranma Saotome. Saotome Ranma." Akane finally drifted to sleep wondering where she'd heard the name before.  
  
===============  
  
end 3?  



End file.
